About a year ago, a very reliable training partner of mine
wrote a post-London marathon blog about the top five things he’d learnt from
his recent experiences. In the same vain, I’ve
actually written a serious piece for once!
This post discusses the top five things that worked for me in a season
where overall I smashed my PBs at every distance I raced.
1) Don’t undeRESTimate
the power of nothing:
I know lots of runners, and I used to be one, who
underestimated rest. I don’t mean rest
days, and I don’t mean tapering for races. We all do that. I mean perpetual training because you want to keep
improving, are worried about falling behind, and are not looking at the big picture.
Just because you don’t feel tired, doesn’t mean you aren’t.
Rest was the foundation for last season. After averaging probably 60 miles per week
for the previous 18 months, last summer my ankle revolted, and caused me have three unplanned months out, emerging from the other side of that dark tunnel with precious little fitness
(mostly because I couldn’t be arsed to even try and maintain it). But it enabled me to build my whole season
around the idea of regaining fitness and to run a big PB at BUCS. I don’t think that I would have done this so
easily without the downtime which completely refreshed me.
2) Periodisation:
I’ve never done this consciously before, but having a goal
which was sixth months away was the key, as it was ample time to build up each
element of fitness. I broke my time down
in to three, two-month blocks, and a further one after BUCS. Each element prioritied a different training
component: endurance, strength, thresholds or speed endurance. Looking back, it took only three weeks of
hard training to regain 90 percent of my fitness, but this method meant that in
total, it took just four months to go from no fitness, into PB territory. The
proof is in the pudding, and in May-July I demolished my best times for
everything from 1500m to 10k (the longest I raced).
3) Big performances are
possible, but belief is the key:
To be fair, Sammy Rashid has always said this to me, but I
proved his theory! Doubling up at the
Olympic Stadium was never the plan, but I’ll be honest and say that I was
slightly disappointed with my 16:14 in the 5000m heats. Logic and common
sense said that tired and sore legs couldn’t do any better the next day; after all, it had taken two years of trying just
to break 34 minutes for 10k, a feat achieved just two months prior. But, with only a pizza and 6 hours sleep
preparation, I lined up on the startline of the 10,000m less than 18 hours
later, believing that I could take something from the track that cold
morning. An 18 second PB proved to me
that if the training is in the bank and you believe in it, last min preparation isn’t that important
at all.
4) Cadence, not stride
length:
Increasing your cadence (ideally to 180 steps/minute) is
the way forward. To run at a given pace, the energy needed to take more, smaller steps is less than fewer longer
ones, and ideally, this will eventually lead to quick long strides. But in practice it is really difficult to
change a habit. I’ve been trying for a
year, and whenever I do it, it really works.
But I wouldn’t say that I’m anywhere near mastering this yet, although I had some success.
5) Know your strengths:
We all know I’m not a sprinter, but this year has clarified
that: My body responds far better to high-volume endurance training than
high-recovery speed endurance. Based on
this summer, I require around two months to train my legs to diversify their
endurance, to bring my shorter race times in-line with my longer ones. But middle distance training will not improve
my overall ability. Only endurance will
do this, and knowing this will enable me to consolidate how I train this coming year.
For me, I've called it a year on the 2011-12 season, which has been my best yet. Training will begin soon in earnest for what will hopefully be a full-body-mud-bath-free XC season, and some other targets that I need to work out! Watch this space...
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